SPECIES 5. HIP UNDO PELASGM.* 



CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 



[Plate XXXIX. Fig. 1.] 



LATH. Syn. v, p. 583 32. CATESB. Car. Jlpp. t. 8. Hirondelle 

 da la Caroline, BUFF, vi, p. 700. Hirundo Carolinensis, BRISS. 

 n, p. 50], 9.Aculeated Swallow, Arct. Zool. n, JVo. 33518. 

 TURT. 8yst. p. 6SO. PEALE'S Museum, JVb. 7663. 



THIS species is peculiarly our own; and strongly distinguish- 

 ed from all the rest of our Swallows by its figure, flight, and 

 manners. Of the first of these the representation in the plate 

 will give a correct idea; its other peculiarities shall be detailed 

 as fully as the nature of the subject requires. 



This Swallow, like all the rest of its tribe in the United 

 States, is migratory, arriving in Pennsylvania late in April or 

 early in May, and dispersing themselves over the whole coun- 

 try wherever there are vacant chimneys in summer sufficiently 

 high and convenient for their accommodation. In no other situ- 

 ation with us are they observed at present to build. This cir- 

 cumstance naturally suggests the query, Where did these birds 

 construct their nests before the arrival of Europeans in this 

 country, when there were no such places for their accommoda- 

 tion? I would answer probably in the same situations in which 

 they still continue to build in the remote regions of our west- 

 ern forests, where European improvements of this kind are 

 scarcely to be found, namely, in the hollow of a tree, which in 

 some cases has the nearest resemblance to their present choice 

 of any other. One of the first settlers in the state of Kentucky 

 informed me, that he cut down a large hollow beech tree which 

 contained forty or fifty nests of the Chimney Swallow, most of 



. Syst, i, p. 345. GMEL. Syst. i, p. i023. LATH. hd. Orn. n, ;>. 581, 







